Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

BAILLIE/DISCOURSE ANENT EPISCOPACY’
181
They cite from Jerome also, Against the Luciferians, bk. 2, ch. 4, thir words:
‘The well-being of a church depends upon the dignity of its chief priest, and
unless some extraordinary and unique functions [ab hominibus] be assigned to
him, we shall have as many schisms in the churches as there are priests.’131 He
speaks heere of the danger to contemne the order that is setled in the church by
any privat person, for Lucifer, himself a bishop, had made a schismaticall separa¬
tion from the church upon the pretext of the subscription of all other bishops to
the Arrian councell at Ariminium. Nothing heere is said of the divine or apostolick
institution of bishops, but especially the exors potestas he gives them is said to be
ab hominibus and the ground of it, as there he speaks, are leges ecclesiae,132 and that
are necessar, for, sayes he, this power is given ‘more by way of honouring the
episcopate [sacerdotium] than from any compulsory law’. Yea, the ground of that
exors potestas, let be to be divine, it is not an humane defensible right, for the
matters wherin it consists, among others, are that the bishop hath sole power of
baptisme and preaching. ‘Hence it is that without ordination and the bishop’s
license neither presbyter nor deacon has the power to baptise.’ This they will not,
I hope, defend.
Beside particular testimonies they have some general! reasons, the chief wherof
are thir two following. First, whatever hes bin all times and all places, not institut
in any general! councell, that is an apostolick tradition and of divine right. But
[36r] bishops superiour to presbyters in degree and power of jurisdiction was in
all times and places, etc., ergo.The major, though taken from Augustine, we may
not grant without a distinction; it must be restricted to things of necessar use and
unvariable practice, such as the baptisme of infants, the celebration of Sunday
according to the mind of some, but for rites of variable and indifferent use it is
denyed. The granting of it simpHe is the ruinating of sole scripture, the maine
ground of the Protestant religion; yea, from it our partie is pressing on our con¬
science already many popish superstitions such as Lent fast, worship towards the
east, altars, images on them, bowing before them, subjection to the pope as pa¬
triarch of the West, etc. The minor also is palpablie false. We deny them in any
place of the world one of their bishops for many hundreth yeeres; yea, the an¬
cient bishop, that constant moderator of the diocesse, was not in all times nor in
all places. He began at Alexandria [and] was not received long after in many
places. See Jerome, Epistle to Evangelus and onTitus.Tor even at Alexandria ...’133
Therafter the scripture was closed and Mark died; a bishop is elected by the
presbyters of their owne accord, as the armie chuseth the captaine or the deacons
131 The Dialogue against the Luciferians, in Jerome, Letters and Select Works, 324.
132 ‘extraordinary power ...from men ...laws of the church’.
133 Commentary on Titus. See p. 156, n. 30 above.